plotting & planning
all our free writing craft resources on crafting your story’s structure!
How Scene Choices Determine Successful Character Arcs
While reading, we become active participants in a point-of-view character’s journey (seriously, our brains become the character). This means that when characters undergo a deep journey of change, we do too. Character [...]
How to Plan a Magical Revision
You finished your first draft! That is a huge accomplishment. Do you know how many people in the world wish they could say that? Do you know how many unfinished [...]
How to Draft a Killer Story Climax
The climax moment of your story is everything. It's Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy making up (+ making out). It's Katniss and Peeta agreeing to eat the poison berries. It's Jon [...]
How To Structure Scenes
Scenes are the building blocks of stories. A scene has its own beginning, middle and end. The best scenes contain plot problems that push your protagonist to make a character-revealing decision [...]
How to Pick the Perfect Protagonist
Stories are about change—specifically, they are about how characters change. Characters are the heart and soul of any story, which means that we should [...]
Overcoming My Fear of the Blank Page
I have spent most of my years as a writer struggling with the blank page. I used to [...]
The ‘Show/Tell’ Spectrum
We’ve all heard the adage, “Show, Don’t Tell.” It’s everywhere, a warning to writers that this is a [...]
